The Chamber of Commerce's Jobs Deception Campaign

Unions are popularly known as "the folks who brought you the weekend." In contrast, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce has the distinction of trying to take away the weekend--along with overtime pay, the minimum wage, Buy America rules, workers' freedom to form unions, child labor standards....The list is long and ugly.

So it's farcical that today the Chamber launched a campaign estimated to run in the tens of millions of dollars to promote job creation.

The Chamber's campaign originally started out as an attack against financial regulation--until the Chamber found out how strongly U.S. taxpayers support reining in Big Banks and the financial industry's widespread shady practices. So the Chamber conveniently changed the packaging to purportedly focus on jobs, which in fact the American people desperately need.

Look at who accompanied the Chamber suits while they were announcing their Orweillian-named "free enterprise campaign." As Sam Stein reported here:

Many of the individuals featured on Wednesday are long-standing donors to Republican candidates and groups that have fought efforts to enhance regulation. And, in one case, the business leader appearing alongside [Thomas] Donohue to decry the interference of government in the market place received business through the benefit of government contracts.

Yet, while millions of America's workers struggle to find jobs in an economy where there are more than six workers searching for every one job, the Chamber repeatedly opposed extending unemployment insurance. Can't have government interference in the marketplace, after all. Or aid to jobless workers. The same workers the Chamber's smoke-and-mirrors campaign is supposed to be all about.

The Chamber also is joining with Big Banks and financial giants to try and kill a proposed agency that would protect U.S. consumers from being preyed upon by unscrupulous banks, mortgage lenders and many of the same financial institutions that helped create our nation's economic disaster. The Obama administration's proposed Consumer Financial Protection Agency, which this week is being considered in the House Financial Services Committee, would regulate products such as credit cards and home loans, while ensuring the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission oversaw the $450 trillion "derivatives" market that sunk the world economy.

The Chamber is spending $2 million in attack ads, claiming that the new agency would hamstring even your local butcher from extending you credit for a week. It's the same sorry effort at deception and outright lies that the health insurance industry now is trying to pull in the debate over health care reform. Tell enough lies and hope someone believes you.

As President Obama said in response to the Chamber's distortion:

"We've made clear that only businesses that offer financial services would be affected by this agency. I don't know how many of your butchers are offering financial services," Obama said to laughter.

The Chamber is so twisted up in deception it seems unable to even provide accurate membership numbers. Writing in Mother Jones this week, David Corn points to a big discrepancy between the Chamber's public membership numbers and reality.

In testimony before Congress, statements to the press, and on its website, the Chamber claims to represent "3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions." In reality, the number is probably closer to 200,000.

Not sure if the 200,000 includes Apple Inc., Pacific Gas & Electric and the other giant corporations that recently have pulled their membership from the Chamber because of its draconian stand on climate change.

The Chamber's so-called "free enterprise" campaign has been tried before. After World War II, the National Association of Manufacturers led a similar such effort. That campaign to sell capitalism to U.S. consumers incurred the derision of no less than the editors of Fortune magazine, who found similar sentiments among business executives represented on the boards of the business associations that supposedly represented them.

In dismissing the campaign as ludicrous, one such executive described it this way:

The best way we can demonstrate the importance of Free Enterprise is to make it work.

It's clearly not working now. And although the Chamber may try to wrap itself in the shiny trappings of a feel-good campaign, its repeated attacks on consumers and workers demonstrate who the Chamber stands for: Wall Street not Main Street.

Comments

[fahma]

FYI: my reply to Tom Donohue's editorial at real clear politics, http://comments.realclearpolitics.com/read/1/473556/475308.html#msg-475; the edited jist of it is here:

This whole issue is not whether the American Gummint is better for us than American Corporations. It is both working together, along side the Workers that will be better for all of us. But I suppose that doesn't fit with the current wisdom that we have to divide and conquer our opposition or we lose, does it?

We're in this together, we Workers and we the Companies. And we need to be an honest part of the discussion; we Workers who are honest with ourselves have learned that we have no jobs without investors and entrepreneurs who start or run Companies that develop those jobs.

After looking over the U. S. Chamber's members and Board of Directors lists, it's clear that it has developed a symbiotic relationship with the Republican Party, the Party that has prevented progress for decades, and has never had the interests of Workers at heart.
Going forward, fewer American Workers will be able to purchase the goods made by the companies we work for. And if we don't work together, the "us-against-them" atmosphere that's a result of so many Companies' inability to earn our trust will never change, and we'll be able to afford less and less of those products.

[dadw5boys]

Has Free Enterprize ever done anything for the People that they could not have done themselves ? , wars to protect their expansionism ?
Cannon Fooder for their money machine ????

Wars do not help anyone except the weapons makers.

[dadw5boys]

OVER TURNING THE NEW DEAL 100 % ?????

[jeffrey678]

Tom Donahue President of the US Chamber of Commerce was trying to sell this program on CNBC Business channel and FOX (Cavuto). They practically LAUGHED IN HIS FACE and were very skeptical. No one is buying it !

[Enigma2008]

The period since the election last year has been an education for me in what the US Chamber under Tom Donahue is about. Their e-mails to members clearly show that they are not about doing anything to help real small businesss. Every message is word for word out of the Republican talking points. No support for small business, environmental sector jobs, pooling for Worker's Comp or medical insurance. It is big business bought and paid for. The local Chamber can forget about our little $275 dues this year---ribbon cutting in our town does not make up for the sell out by the national organization under the organization name.

[stack]

This is what cracks me up:

'In testimony before Congress, statements to the press, and on its website, the Chamber claims to represent "3 million businesses of all sizes, sectors, and regions." In reality, the number is probably closer to 200,000." '

Man, they'll lie about anything. I mean, that's quite an exaggeration!